Vote likely this week on ATF pick

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid launched another confirmation effort this week over President Barack Obama’s nominee to be ATF director – with what looks like an unlikely assist from the National Rifle Association.

Reid filed for cloture on the nomination of B. Todd Jones to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as soon as Monday, which would prompt a Wednesday cloture vote for the Minnesotan.

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The NRA has told people involved in the confirmation effort that it will remain neutral on the Jones nomination, sources said Monday, allowing Democrats from gun-friendly states and Republicans to vote for Jones without hurting their standing with the gun rights organization.

NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam declined to comment. “Our position will be made clear before the vote,” he said Monday.

White House officials began calling law enforcement allies Friday to get them to whip support for Jones, the U.S. attorney for Minnesota who Obama named interim ATF director in 2011 and nominated for the post permanently as part of his menu of executive actions on gun violence after last December’s school shooting massacre at Newtown, Conn.

The law enforcement groups are lobbying senators who participated in the filibuster-saving deal that allowed confirmation votes earlier this month on Labor Secretary Tom Perez, EPA Administrator Lisa McCarthy and National Labor Relations Board members.

“The law enforcement community is frustrated by the longstanding lack of a director and people demanding accountability by the ATF should favor having a proven executive in charge of the agency,” said Jim Pasco, the executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police.

Jones’s nomination was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote July 11. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the committee’s ranking Republican, sought to delay that vote on the grounds that Jones had not sufficiently answered questions about a whistleblower complaint brought by a subordinate in the Minnesota U.S. attorney’s office.

Jones’s confirmation was not part of the filibuster deal earlier this month, but law enforcement officials and Senate leadership are optimistic that he can be confirmed, in part based on the NRA’s neutrality. The Senate has not confirmed an ATF director since the position became confirmable in 2006.

Grassley indicated to the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he was going let Jones’s nomination to go through; he later told POLITICO he “misspoke” during that interview, saying late last week that there remains a “possibility” he will try to hold up the nomination, depending on how the Republican caucus feels about Jones.

“This guy, he’s been accused by whistleblowers of harassment,” Grassley said. “We should wait until this investigation and this case on the whistleblowers is over.”